Drugmakers ordered to pay $9 billion for hiding cancer risks

Japan's biggest pharmaceutical company has been hit with a $6 billion penalty for concealing cancer risks associated with its Actos diabetes drug while Eli Lilly and Co, Takeda's co-defendant in the case, was ordered to pay $3 billion in punitive damages.

In 2011, Germany and France suspended use of the drug, a multibillion dollar seller, due to worries about a possible link to cancer.

The jury deliberated for only an hour and 10 minutes to deliver its verdict finding liability on all 14 questions, and another 45 minutes to come out with the multibillion dollar punitive damages. The jury also ordered the payment of $1.475 million in compensatory damages in the suit. Punitive damages are meant to discourage other companies from bad conduct while compensatory damages are meant to compensate victims for their losses.

A $5 billion penalty was imposed by a jury in Alaska on Exxon Mobil Corp for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 but, in 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the previous Exxon Valdez award had been "excessive". The company was ultimately ordered to pay $500 million. In federal cases, that and other rulings have been read as limiting punitive damages.